


Intersect of Interests

by 0bsidianFire



Series: Static Tuned in to Reason [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Discovery, Gen, Magic experiments, POV Outsider, unlikely friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 22:17:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14757315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bsidianFire/pseuds/0bsidianFire
Summary: Having Nero around was awkward. But the awkwardness of one of the Warriors of Light getting along with Nero was not something Alphinaud had anticipated. Given how obsessed Kharagal is Allagan mathematics, he really should have entertained the possibility.





	Intersect of Interests

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DT Maxwell (Draya)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draya/gifts).



> This was inspired by the one-shot [Academic Debate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12883359/chapters/29874177) from the [Aethertrails](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12883359/chapters/29430882) collection by [DT Maxwell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draya/pseuds/DT%20Maxwell). I highly recommend reading those if you want more fun Arcanist shenanigans and fluffy Carbuncles.
> 
> Takes place sometime shortly after Deltascape.

Alphinaud would never admit it to anyone but one of his favorite places to be in Ralgar's Reach was the Ironworks Laboratory. It reminded him of his time in the Studium when he had been researching Carbuncle augmentation. Only instead of augmenting aether constructs, Cid was doing that to things that were bound by physical laws. Alphinaud found the way Cid managed to get around the limitations imposed by the corporeal world fascinating and a welcome break from the tedium that politics frequently devolved into.

Usually it was only him and Cid looking over various things Cid had noticed in his time in Eorzea. The keyword being usually. Today when he got there it wasn't just Cid in the Ironworks Laboratory. Nero was sitting at one end of a table with several open binders surrounding him and one of the main Ironworks computer's beeping in the background. At the other end of the table was Kharagal Meirqid, one of the Warriors of Light. She had a tomestone reader in front of her and stacked around her were many tomestones of various types. Thankfully, none of her egis were anywhere to be seen. Those still creeped Alphinaud out. Fortunately, it seemed both Nero and Kharagal were ignoring each other which was an improvement over their usual relationship. Kharagal had made it very clear that she did not like Nero's activation of Omega. Alphinaud still wondered how that was any different from the times Kharagal had experimented with Allagan magical techniques.

Rather then disturb either of them, Alphinaud threaded his way around tables until he got to Cid. He was predictably on the other side of the room from Nero and Kharagal and was forcibly ignoring them while working on an engine of some type. "When did they get here?"

Cid grimaced. "Nero was here when I got here and unfortunately I can't kick him out of the Ironworks labs anymore. Kharagal got here not long after I did. But what I want to know is where she got that tomestone reader. She brought it with her and I know it's not a model the Ironworks or Rowena have."

Alphinaud looked at the tomestone reader Kharagal was using. It was of a smaller, slimmer build then the other readers he had seen. To Alphianud, it looked more similar to the Allagan technology in Dalamud then the technology in Syrcuss Tower. "She probably found it in Azys La. I know she spends a lot of time there."

"Don't remind me of that place," Cid groaned. "Jessie still wants us to do a thorough survey of it after we're done with this Omega business."

Alphinaud held back a chuckle. "Normally I would say you should hurry up and get there before the Garleans, but in this case I think it is Kharagal and Nhagi'a you need to beat." The two Warriors of Light enjoyed using Azys Lla as their testing ground of choice for both Summoning and Black Magic respectively. According to them it was nice to go against enemies that required the use of high-impact magic to beat. 

Cid shrugged. "At least if it's them, the Garleans aren't getting to it. Would you hand me that ring of hex keys?" He jerked his head over at the large collection of tools laid out on a nearby table.

Alphiaud looked over the tools and tried find the set of L-shaped wrenches among the more traditional combination wrenches Cid used. He found them hiding behind a set of screwdrivers and handed them to Cid. "What are you working on now?"

"Disassembling one of the XIIth Legion's engines." Cid pulled out screws from the engine and dropped them onto a magnetized plate. "I would be working on Omega, but that's hit a wall and this can't be done by someone who is just starting to learn how cerulum engines work." He chuckled. "The hardest part is not correcting all the design flaws in it."

"What kind of flaws?" Alphinaud asked. While he knew the basics of cerulum engine design, he did not know what really set a well designed one apart from a badly designed one.

Cid laughed. "You sure you want to ask me that? I could go on for hours."

Alphinaud snickered, "That is exactly why I am here."

"Well you asked for it," Cid said and started talking. Alphinaud got comfortable and settled in for an informal lecture. It was nice to hear someone ramble on about their passion again.

Hours later, Cid extracted himself out from under the engine. "That's the last compression chamber disassembled." He dropped his tools on the table next to the engine and stretched. "Alphinaud, you want to take a break?"

Alphinaud looked up from where he had been sorting screws by head shape and drive type. "Yes, a break would be good. I am starting to have trouble telling the Phillips and Pozidrive screws apart."

Cid laughed and clapped Alphinaud on the back. "Come on then, the last thing we want is getting those mixed up."

Alphinaud laughed with him and the two of them walked out of the lab. On the way out, Alphinaud passed Kharagal and Nero who were still in the lab. Nero was working at the Ironworks computer that stored the data gotten from Omega, but now the binders were gone and the old chunky tomestones found in Omega were connected to the computer. Kharagal was still looking at her tomestone reader and was flipping something though her fingers. Oddly enough, it looked like the Anti-Gravity Gimbal. Alphinaud assumed he was seeing things; it was very unlikely that Nero would have let any of the Warriors of Light walk away with one of his inventions and Kharagal had plenty of Allagan artifacts he didn't recognize.

* * *

Naturally, the short break from the lab stretched into a longer general break. Jessie came over and started arguing with Cid about something to do with alloys that were not available in Eorzea. Alphinaud was pulled away from that conversation by Lyse who wanted some advice about how to smooth things over between two different groups of what used to be rebels. When that was done, he went over some tactics with the few Ala Mhigan battlemages in the Resistance which turned into an impromptu lunch.

It wasn't until afterwards that he was able to make his way back to the lab. He found Cid in front of the lab doors talking with an Ironworks engineer. Cid looked tense. "...sure you haven't seen anyone?" Cid demanded as he walked up. At Alphiaud's questioning look he relaxed a bit. "We have a problem; nobody's heard anything from the lab for a few bells."

"And no one has come out of the lab?" Alphinaud asked. That was unusual. There was always some noise coming from the lab, whether that was the cerulum generator powering the computers, or the general chatter of the engineers. The lab was only silent when nobody was using it.

"Not that we've seen," said the Ironworks engineer. "We knew we weren't making use of the lab today, but we thought it was just an off day." She scratched the back of her neck. "We didn't know Nero tol Sceava and one of the Warriors of Light were supposed to be in there. If we'd known they were, we'd have paid more attention. Sorry Chief."

"Well, let's hope they are still in there", said Cid grimly and pulled open the doors of the lab.

Alphinaud followed him in and looked around the very empty lab. "Well. They are certainly not here." The computers were turned off, the binders put back on their shelf and all of Kharagal's tomestones were gone.

"And it doesn't look like a fight happened." Cid gesturing at the lab that was free of any signs of a struggle. "So how would they-- Alphinaud! Come over here!"

Alphinaud walked further into the lab and stooped in front of the blackboards Cid was staring at. From far away, the blackboards had looked like they was covered in the usual random notes the Ironworks employees jotted down. Now he could see they were covered in both equations and geometric shapes that Alphinaud knew were arcane geometries. They certainly hadn't been there before he had left the lab. At least, Aliphinaud hoped he would have remembered if he had seen the equation and geometry for Bane in a public place like this. That was not a geometry that was shared lightly. "It looks like Kharagal wrote out a number of common arcane geometries," Alphinaud told Cid. The right-hand blackboard was filled with Kharagal's messy handwriting and clean diagrams.

"It wasn't just Kharagal," said Cid. He tapped at the left blackboard. Alphinaud didn't recognize the neat handwriting. He also didn't recognize many of the equations written on the blackboard either. "This is Nero's handwriting and these are many of the formulas used in magitek research. Hmm, most of them are the ones that have to do with gravity and calculating magitek field sizes."

"So they were both going over their respective math systems at the same time," mused Alphinaud to himself. Then he saw it. "No, it was the opposite. They were showing each other how their math systems worked."

"Nero? Assume a mage could get this stuff?" scoffed Cid. "What makes you say that?"

"Look here." Alphinaud pointed at the section of blackboard in between Nero and Kharagal's writings. "I don't know what Nero wrote down, but Kharagal made a list of the most common arcane constants and their numerical values. If it turns out Nero was writing down the Garlean equivalents, they may have been making a conversion table."

Cid squinted at the list of numbers and symbols. "You might be right. These are the correct numerical values of the constants, but why go into all this trouble?"

Alphinaud looked at Cid. "I think the better question would be why would Kharagal and Nero leave after they figured all this out."

"Well if it was just Nero we were talking about I would say he would probably go test this somehow." Cid stroked his beard. "But at least half of this math is the stuff you, Kukunji and Kharagal use in you spell casting and I have no idea how he could use that. What about Kharagal?"

"Kharagal..." Alphinaud trailed off and looked at all the arcane geometries on the blackboard, several of which he now realized he didn't recognize at all. "Kharagal would probably do the same thing honestly. Now that I think of it, I am surprised she has not tried to figure out Garlean mathematics before now."

Cid looked at the conversion table. "Maybe she just didn't know what the constants meant and now that she knows she's playing with it."

"That sounds very likely," Alphinaud allowed. "It still does not help us know where they are. Where--" He was interrupted by an explosion and the sound of a rockslide in the distance. "You do not suppose that is them."

Cid closed his eyes and sighed. "Probably. Neither of them are foolish enough to do live tests inside the Reach at least." He turned and walked out of the lab.

Alphinaud followed him out and sighed. _I guess we are the ones who have to go after them; no one else will want to confront a Warrior of Light or a former Imperial Tribunus..._

* * *

Alphinaud and Cid's search lead them to a side-canyon off the river that fed into the Reach. While they were looking, they heard several more explosions followed by rockslides. Alphinaud really wanted to know what Kharagal was doing to need so many of what where probably test spells.

They found Kharagal sitting in the dirt against a rock wall with no less then three open grimores around her. She was writing in a fourth one with one of the Garlean-style pens that came pre-filled with ink and muttering to herself. Draped around her shoulders and head was Leviathan-Egi like some serpentine scarf.

Nero was sitting close enough to Kharagal that he could read what she was writing with little trouble and was reading off something from one of his data collectors to her. Both of them were looking at the cliff across the canyon from where they were sitting. It was pockmarked with explosion blasts of various sizes.

"Well," Alphinaud heard Kharagal say as he got closer to them, "the Midas Function looks like it scales exponentially and not linearly with magic power, so that'll be interesting to play with. The aether cost's a problem though if the caster can't hold enough at once."

Nero snorted. "So even with aether it's still all about resource management."

Kharagal nodded. "Yeah, but I've got practically unlimited--"

"And just what do the two of you think you are doing?" Cid interrupted, "I thought we said-"

"Figuring out if Garlean mathematics can be used as spell geometries," said Kharagal nose deep in her grimore. "And so far it's looking very promising."

"Why did you only start on it now?" Alphinaud asked.

"I've wanted to figure out the math for Levitation ever since I saw Xande cast it back at Syrcuss Tower and Nero's somehow figured out how to do it with Garlean physics which turns out are really based on Allagan physics. Which I didn't know until this morning." She finally looked up at Alphinaud. "Do you know how useful it would have been to known this earlier?"

Alphinaud's brain tripped over the idea of trying to duplicate one of Xande's spells and he reminded himself who he was talking to. Kharagal was never one to not pursue an idea just because the originator of the idea was problematic. All the techniques she knew that could be linked back to Bahamut were evidence enough of that. It also would explain why she might be all right with working with Nero. "I will admit that I can think of numerous occasions a levitation spell would have be useful."

"That still doesn't change the fact that Nero is not supposed to leave the Reach," Cid interjected. "Why did you leave?"

Nero chuckled as he cleaned a speck of dust off his sunglasses. "Oh Cid... Kharagal kept pestering me about the physics behind the Anti-Gravity Gimbal until I wrote the equations out on the board just to shut her up. I thought she was doing it to be annoying but it turns out she has a better understanding of the math behind them then half of the tenured professors at the Magitek Academy. Apparently it has a lot in common with the way she uses aether."

Cid shook his head at that. "It still doesn't explain why you left."

"That would have been me," said Kharagal. "We got to the point where I would have to assume the behaviors of equations I had never cast as spells before and that's not considered a good scientific practice by most creditable arcanists. I asked Nero if he knew any way to get out of the Reach so I could see how they worked and well," she shrugged, "here we are."

Alphinaud nodded in sympathy. Describing how arcane spells worked without ever casting them would have had any Sharlayan laughed out of the classroom. And given how much aether Kharagal could use at once, testing any spells in the Reach was not an option. From the look on Cid's face, he understood the concept even if he didn't like it. Before Cid could start talking, Alphinaud decided to intervene. "So I take it you are not going to be going anywhere else for the rest of today?"

Now Kharagal snickered. "I've barely got enough data on how one equation works as a spell and I've got to test at lest five more. And then we'll see where we can go from there. I probably won't be leaving the Reach for a week at least."

"Why not? Surely you can do your tests elsewhere?" Alphinaud was not looking forward to explaining to the Resistance that the explosions they heard were one of the Warriors of Light tearing up the landscape. Besides, the Arcanists' Guild had testing grounds for exactly this purpose in La Nosca.

"Not really," said Kharagal. "Unfortunately I can't get to the original Allagan equations so I need someone around who has a better knowledge of Garlean mathematics then I do to check my work. And you do not count." She scowled up at Cid.

Alphinaud winced. It made sense that Kharagal would not go to Cid about any of this. The two of them had never seen eye to eye about what to do with Allagan technology and their relationship had only worsened when Cid had found out along with everyone else that Kharagal could cast Deathflare and Teraflare. On the other hand, having any idea about what Kharagal was researching was an improvement over how much information the Scions usually had on what she researched at any given time. "I do not see an issue so long as we know where you are." At Cid's look Alphiaud went on, "Would you rather them research Garlean mathematics and not know what they are finding out about it?"

Cid sighed in defeat. "You have a point." He eyed Nero. "But what does Jessie think about all this? I thought you were supposed to be helping her out."

Nero snorted. "Unlike some of us, I already got in this week's worth of reports to her. So long as I remain on-call she won't be bothered by it; it's in my contact. Even so, I highly doubt she would have a problem if I helped out one of the Warriors of Light on a research project they suggested." He smirked. "You know, I'd forgotten how good this felt. I haven't had a chance to do research this pure since I had to figure out how to restore Ultima Weap--"

"Oh, shut up!" Cid said and stormed out of the canyon.

Alphianud stared after him before looking at Kharagal. "If you were anyone else, I would tell you to be careful about trying out untested spell geometries. Instead I will ask that you continue to show the same amount of care in choosing testing sites that do not run the risk of threating the Reach's structural integrity as you currently are."

Kharagal gave him a look. "Since when have I ever been that sloppy?"

He snorted despite himself. "I know you are not, but our friends over in the Reach do not know that." Kharagal joined in his laughter and Alphinaud left the canyon in a better mood then he had entered it.

* * *

Kharagal waited for Alphinaud and Cid to disappear around the bend before turning to Nero. "Wait, you're the one who restored Ultima Weapon?"

Nero didn't look up from the data collector. "Yeah, what of it?"

"Well... We've fought a few more versions of Ultima Weapon since then. Prototypes we think. From what I can tell none of them have anything like the Heart of Sabik in them."

"What?!" Nero's head snapped up.

Kharagal grinned at him and stroked Leviathan-Egi's tail. "I wouldn't have a problem giving you a bunch of tomestones that just so happen to have all the data I've collected on the other Ultima Weapons on them if you let me see the data of the original Ultima Weapon."

Nero paused and sighed. "Given who we're with, I don't have that data on me at the moment." He swallowed. "Ask me again once I've had a chance to go back to Mor Dhona. It's very likely I'll have it then."

"Sounds good to me," said Kharagal and she went back to recording data points with a smile on her face.

**Author's Note:**

> No, when Alphinaud thought they were sharing research, that's not quite the research he had in mind...


End file.
